


Rhymes with I Love You

by Ptolomeia



Category: Sanders Sides (Web Series)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Human, Fluff, M/M, Mutual Pining, Thomas is really dumblivious, and i love him, let the boys be happy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-16
Updated: 2021-03-16
Packaged: 2021-03-25 10:55:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,804
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30088035
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ptolomeia/pseuds/Ptolomeia
Summary: Thomas realizes he is deeply in love with his friend Janus. Luckily for him, it turns out Janus loves him back.
Relationships: Deceit | Janus Sanders/Thomas Sanders, thomceit
Comments: 16
Kudos: 24





	Rhymes with I Love You

**Author's Note:**

> I have two moods as an author--Cause Janus the maximum possible amount of pain, and let the boy be happy with his boy. This is strictly the second kind. I wanted something sweet and soft and wholesome, where Thomas realizes how deeply he is in love with Janus and proceeds to pine like the dumblivious character we know and love. And then they get to be happy together *anyway*. 
> 
> Hope you enjoy, please leave a comment if you do!

It was the laugh that undid him. Loud, unrestrained, belly laughter. Tears in the corners of his eyes and little sounds that Janus would never admit were snorts escaping. Janus unabashedly, dorkily, _loudly_ happy, for all the world, but most importantly, for _Thomas_ to see.

Thomas knew then and there that, not only did he love Janus, he’d loved him for a while. He didn’t think the words “I love you so much” would have come so close to falling out of his mouth like an armed, friendship destroying bomb if he hadn’t been in love for a while.

And could anyone really blame him? This was _Janus_ he was talking about. Brilliant, beautiful, eloquent, funny, sharp—Thomas could go on all day. And had. The less said about the contents of the margins of his notes (kept carefully tucked away whenever there was a change of seeing Janus) these days, the better.

But more than any of those things (and they were great things!) Janus was _kind_. You’d never guess, when you first met him, but under all that snark and swagger, Janus was one of the most considerate people Thomas had ever met. He was always willing to go a little out of his way to help, and he never forgot to make Thomas a cup of tea when he made himself one.

Yes, Thomas was deeply and irrevocably in love with Janus, and had been for who knew how long. There were only two problems with this.

The first one wasn’t so bad; Janus didn’t love him back. Which was fair, honestly. Thomas was an anxious mess of a human being, barely able to keep on top of his master’s work. Thomas might be able to listen to Janus talk for _hours_ about the philosophers he loved and studied and analyzed, but it’s not like Thomas had ever been able to really _get_ any of it. Why wouldn’t Janus want someone who was his intellectual equal? Someone who could at least _appear_ to be as put together as Janus was?

So yeah, Janus didn’t love him back, but that really wasn’t the real problem. Thomas was happy just being Janus’s friend, spending time with him just as he always had. No, it was the _second_ problem that was the real problem.

You think a man who’d spend over two decades in the closet would be better at hiding things, but _nope_. Apparently he’d used up all his secret keeping abilities in those years because now, every time he saw Janus, every time Janus made a quip, or smirked, or _breathed_ , Thomas was overcome with the desire to tell Janus about his unreciprocated feelings.

In retrospect, letting Janus serve him wine when Janus had come over for dinner had been a bad idea.

He hadn’t _actually_ said “Janus, I love you, please pass the salt”, but it was a close run thing.

No, it wasn’t until after supper and another glass of wine was finished and cleaned up from, after Janus had made them both a cup of tea and was sitting with Thomas on his small, busted up couch in his small, student apartment, talking in depth about the idiocy of some famous philosopher, as Thomas watched Janus’s elegant hands so eloquently illustrate what Janus was saying, that the words he’d barely managed to keep behind clenched teeth for the past few weeks fell out into the world.

“I’m in love with you.”

Janus froze. Thomas froze. Oh shit. He wanted to believe he hadn’t _actually said that_ , but Janus’s entirely unreadable expression said otherwise.

“ _What?_ ” Janus hissed, his eyes searching Thomas’s face.

“Oh God,” Thomas said, reaching up to rub the back of his neck. Too late to pretend he hadn’t said anything and they could ignore it. Now he just had to try for damage control and hope he hadn’t managed to destroy his friendship with Janus completely. “I’m sorry, Janus—I don’t know why I said that. No, I mean, I _do_ , but I know you don’t return my feelings—which is totally fine! I just hope we can—”

“I hate tea,” Janus interrupted Thomas’s frantic and pathetic attempt to explain.

“What?” It was Thomas’s turn to say.

“I hate tea,” Janus said, putting down _the mug of tea he made himself_ , and leaning towards Thomas. “I always have. I’ve spent years trying to find a blend I could stand—you have no idea how many samplers I’ve gone through—before realizing no such blend existed and stopped bothering. Black, Green, White, Pu’er, Herbal, Rooibos, Oolong, Chai—I’ve tried them all to no avail. It doesn’t matter how long I steep them, or if I use the right temperature of water. It doesn’t matter how I try to doctor it with milk or sugar or lemon or honey. Wine, Coffee, plain water, even milk are more to my taste than tea. Hell, I’d rather drink _beer_.”

“But—But that’s ridiculous!” Thomas managed, unable to reconcile the words coming out of Janus’s mouth with the hundreds of mugs of tea he’d seen his friend drink. “You’re literally drinking tea right now! You made it yourself 20 minutes ago! I was right there watching you! Besides, I’ve seen you drink _hundreds_ of cups of tea over the years and never seen you even _touch_ a beer. I swear, every other time we’re at one of our places you say you were thinking of making yourself some tea and would I… like… some…” Thomas felt his eyes widen. No, that _couldn’t_ be it… could it?

“Yes,” Janus said, leaning further forward, eyes bright and intense and overwhelming. “Very early on after meeting you, Thomas—After falling so deeply in love with you I knew I’d never be able to find my way out if I ever wanted to, not that I ever have—I realized you are the most stubborn person on the face of the planet when it comes to letting other people take care of you. You once mentioned that you find a cup of tea soothing, but later, when I wanted to make just you one, you _absolutely refused_ to let me. So, even if I couldn’t stand the stuff, the simplest way for me to offer you the comfort I so desperately wanted to give you was to learn to choke down the stuff myself. I may hate tea, Thomas. But you don’t.”

“Why?”

“Because as someone once said ‘how can I help rhymes with I love you’ and I didn’t think you’d let me say either. Thomas, I would drink a thousand mugs of tea to see that soft, relieved smile of yours when I make you one when you’re stressed. I love you, Thomas. I have loved you for years.”

“But… but _why?”_ Thomas asked, knowing he was repeating himself, but way too overwhelmed to do anything else. Janus loved him?

“Why?” Janus said, head jerking back. “Thomas, I knew you had issues knowing your own worth but—” Janus bit back his words and narrowed his eyes before starting again. “While the fact that you are physically stunning is what first attracted me to you, it’s not the reason I love you.” Breathing. Thomas had to remember that breathing was a thing. “No, I fell in love with you for other things. First of all, that brilliant mind of yours. Not only can you retain and easily access the truly astounding number of facts and how they relate to each other than you need for your engineering work, you have an astonishing way of coming sideways at a problem and developing an elegant solution no one else would imagine. There’s also the fact that you’re hilarious. I don’t think anyone has ever made me laugh as hard or as often as you have. But most importantly, Thomas, the real reason I fell so inescapably in love with you is that you are _kind_. You look at a world filled with casual cruelty and callousness, where injustice runs rampant and stupid rules let people die every day for no reason at all—and you say ‘Yes. All this is true. And I will do what I can to change that. I will be kind’. And you are. And you make the world a better place for it. Thomas, I’d have to be an idiot not to fall in love with you.”

And Janus was no idiot.

“You really love me?” Thomas asked, not quite able to believe it.

“I lie about many things, Thomas. You already know that about me. But I would not, _will not_ , lie about this.” There was more honest vulnerability and emotion in Janus’s eyes than Thomas had ever seen there, and if possible, Thomas fell even deeper. Not that it mattered, because apparently Janus had been waiting to catch him all along. “I love you, Thomas Sanders. And I cannot possibly express how happy I am to hear you love me too.”

Janus loved him. Janus _loved_ him.

Janus had also lied to him, but Thomas had known Janus’s flaws when he’d fallen in love, and had fallen anyway. And now that he knew what Janus was willing to do to make him happy?

“At some point,” Thomas said breathlessly (he seemed to have lost his breath somewhere deep in Janus’s eyes), “At some point we’re going to have to talk about the fact that apparently you’ve been lying to me.”

“Agreed,” Janus said, quick and so certain that Thomas didn’t doubt for a second that they would.

“But until then,” Thomas managed. “Until then, can I kiss yo—”

He didn’t manage to finish the sentence before Janus’s lips were pressed against his own.

“My love,” Janus said with a faint, almost disbelieving reverence, pulling back just far enough to look into Thomas’s eyes. “We can do whatever you want.”

“Whatever _we_ want,” Thomas corrected gently, reaching up to lovingly cup Janus’s cheek. “From here on out, we both tell each other what we actually want, instead of dancing around it, okay?”

“In that case,” Janus more purred than said, turning his face slightly to press a kiss against the pad of Thomas’s thumb, while never taking his eyes of Thomas’s face, “I would very much like to kiss you again.”

Thomas swallowed. Thomas swallowed again. “Agreed,” he just managed to say.

With a soft laugh—a laugh Thomas thought he loved just as much as the belly laugh that made him realize the truth—Janus leaved back in and kissed him again.

Later, they would talk with each other about all the things they still needed to. Later, they would be honest and communicate and build something that let both of them feel heard and loved. But that could wait til morning. For now, there were better things to do.


End file.
